International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation
ISSN: 2617-0299 (Online); ISSN: 2708-0099 (Print)
DOI: 10.32996/ijllt
Journal Homepage: www.al-kindipublisher.com/index.php/ijllt
IJLLT
AL-KINDI CENTER FOR RESEARCH
AND DEVELOPMENT
Copyright: © 2022 the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Published by Al-Kindi Centre for Research and Development,
London, United Kingdom.
Page | 10
| RESEARCH ARTICLE
Feminist Strategies in Qur’ān Translations: A Comparative Study of the Sublime Quran and Saheeh
International
Najlaa R. Aldeeb
Department of Modern Languages, Translation and Interpreting, College of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University, Wales, UK
Corresponding Author: Najlaa R. Aldeeb, E-mail: 2027080@swansea.ac.uk, najla-al-deeb@hotmail.com
| ABSTRACT
For almost thirteen centuries, the Qur’ān had been interpreted by men before it was first translated by a woman. In 1995, Umm
Muhammad, Amina Assami, translated the Qur’ān into English under the pseudonym Saheeh International. Extensive research
indicates that Umm Muhammad’s translation reproduces patriarchal gender hierarchies (Al-Sowaidi et al., 2021), while Laleh
Bakhtiar’s the Sublime Quran comprises feminist elements (Kidwai, 2018). Comparing these two translations to determine whether
the translators employ feminist translation strategies to increase their visibility has not been previously addressed. I aim to
investigate how these women translators transfer feminine nouns and pronouns and generic masculine nouns from Arabic, a
highly gendered language, to English. In this paper, I apply an eclectic approach: the feminist theory by Susanne de Lotbini ere-
Harwood and Luise von Flotow and the basic linguistic theory for the grammatical description of language by Roman Jakobson.
The results reveal that Bakhtiar’s translation published in the USA demonstrates feminist perspectives through utilising prefacing,
supplementing, and neutralisation, whereas Umm Muhammad’s version published in Saudi Arabia depends on exegetical books
and maintains a softer tone between the dominant male and diluted feminist voice. Future researchers should broaden the scope
of the comparison and cover more Qur’ān translations in different countries to examine the impact of women translators’ socio-
cultural contexts on their translations.
| KEYWORDS
Feminist perspectives, patriarchal language, prefacing, supplementing, translators’ visibility
| ARTICLE INFORMATION
ACCEPTED: 26 December 2022 PUBLISHED: 01 January 2023 DOI: 10.32996/ijllt.2023.6.1.2
1. Introduction
Translation studies is an interdisciplinary field in which several studies, such as language, culture, ideology, and gender, intersect.
The intersection of these disciplines has resulted in a move in translation from the linguistic to cultural and, then, ideological
approach. Therefore, the translation focus has shifted from the text as an isolated entity to the text in its cultural environment. This
shift gives the reason for the impact of the women’s movement in the twentieth century on gender and language. According to
Luise Von Flotow (1997), “gender issues have become entangled with issues of language” (p. 1) and translation. In recent years,
feminist translators have attempted to reclaim gender equality by undermining patriarchal language; consequently, they applied
feminist translation strategies to overcome the challenge of transferring patriarchal linguistic elements.
Feminist translation strategies have been applied in all types of texts, including the Bible and the Qur’ān, which for almost thirteen
centuries was interpreted entirely by men, who applied literal translation. With the advent of the feminist movement in the late
twentieth century, in 1995, the first English translation of the Qur’ān by a woman was published under the pseudonym of Saheeh
International. This translation was by Umm Muhammad, Aminah Assami, an American atheist who converted to Islam. It appeared
about four centuries after Alexander Ross produced the first English translation of the Qur’ān, an indirect translation from French
into English, published in 1649. Nowadays, the most well-known women translators of the Qur’ān are Umm Muhammad and Laleh